


since i’ve been walking solo

by seaer



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 04:53:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13023639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaer/pseuds/seaer
Summary: you think: i miss her. you think: who?





	since i’ve been walking solo

**Author's Note:**

> title from without you by oh wonder. im sad

you stop cutting your hair when you start your show. 

when you stride out to grin at your first meagre audience, that thick mess of curls puts something brighter in your step, fills your chest with charisma and words spill from you to charm the villagers that have gathered to see what the commotion is about. you feel like a lion, and your hair is your mane.

when they leave, you hear them whisper your name in hushed, excited tones - taako, taako, taako - it sends bliss through your body, bliss that spreads from your flushed cheeks to the tip of your toes. you hear a dwarf girl say to her friend that your smoked cod was the best thing she’d ever eaten in her life. your fingers shake like they never have before as you keep your pots and pans.

it grows fast. in the months that you spend travelling from town to town, already a mini celebrity, it gets long, and when you catch yourself in a bit of reflective glass in some dingy bar you think to yourself: i know this. then: there’s something missing. 

you buy the dye from a shop down in new elfington, cheap and questionably labelled. after you fall asleep waiting for it to set you wake up bleary and disorientated, but when you get in the shower and wash the curls out, your hair is honeyed sunlight, and you think of running fast and laughing too hard with someone who is your heart, and you think: i look like her. then: who?

you dig the old hat up from your suitcase of clothes and straighten it out, buy flowers and herbs, rosemary and basil, to wreath around the brim. you put it on over your head of yellow curls and when you come onto the temporary stage to host sizzle it up the crowd goes wild. it makes your head spin, in a good way. your hands shake all the while when you fry the rice for them. they drink in your charm, your easy smiles, and in turn you drink in their adoring cheers. 

you think: she’d be so proud of me. you think: who?

it’s like that for a while, like a summer daydream too stubborn to end, you and your show and your fans and all the sizzlingly delicious food in the world. you sign cookbooks for starstruck amateur chefs and hand out free samples to curious children. your name sits on the tip of everyone’s tongue. taako, you know, from tv?

-

after glamour springs you wear your hat flowerless and low over your face. you tuck your voluminous golden hair into the height of it and let it fade to a pale, bleached colour, like sand frosted by a merciless winter ocean. 

it was your transmutation hand - too careless, too sloppy, you tell yourself. just a shit wizard blunder. you got complacent after years of perfectly swapping one food for another. for a while your rule is: no more carelessness. then it becomes: no more responsibility that you can be careless with. 

the guilt eats at you like you’re sea-salted and spiced on the end of a solid silver fork. you lie awake for nights that feel like years and you count them off by their faces in your head: hanna, in the front row, the little tiefling girl who loved watching you turn sugar to salt to pepper, who told you her name as you bent down to listen like that name was the most important string of letters in the planar system. the man with the glasses who told you he’d come from neverwinter for your show. the drow woman, the dragonborn boy, the stupid garlic clove chicken.

sazed fucks all the way off into the sunset before you can say anything to him. at first you don’t care, but in the months that come the loneliness eats at you almost as much as the guilt. your memories of being a teen on the road are filled with camaraderie and laughter that made the surviving on scraps bearable, even though as far as you can remember you’ve been alone out there. 

but now it crushes you, the weight of solitude, the quiet days of pickpocketing and hanging out in shady bars trying to hone your transmutation back into a flawless weapon. sometimes you charm a boy into spending a night with you, but the beds that aren’t yours feel so much colder once they’ve known warmth before. 

sometimes you lie awake and you imagine someone else in the empty bed opposite yours in the rented inn rooms. they talk to you, about the pretty girl whose wallet they stole down at the market, or the curry that you two paid for with stolen money that seared your tongues and mouths and throats all the way through. you can’t quite place their face. you imagine their voice, but it’s just out of reach. 

you think: i miss her. you think: who?

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is [seagfs](http://seagfs.tumblr.com)


End file.
